What have you got planned for the year apart from filming Loose Women?
I have some very exciting new projects in the pipeline and I spend a lot of time with my team on my online maths school, www.themathsfactor.com, which gets amazing results with children from age four upwards. I love teaching maths.
You are famous for your intelligence and numerical skills. Does a healthy diet help boost your brain power?
Absolutely. Research is now proving what we have effectively known as common sense; the correlation between diet and health is direct and considerable and the effect of a bad diet on heart disease, cancers and brain disease can be catastrophic. I take Bioglan Super Fish Oil capsules and also the Bioglan Dual Multivit every day religiously.
You have talked about how your diet wasn’t very healthy in the past, until you teamed up with dietician Ko Chohan and published a detox diet book. What is your diet like today?
I have a very healthy diet now. I don’t weigh myself but in the 13 years since I first did the detox, I’ve only varied by one dress size and am now the same size as I was in 1999. I do want to do more exercise though - time is my big limitation. I have a pair of green satin ‘trying on trousers’ that have no give at all and they tell me all I need to know.
What are your favourite fruits and vegetables?
I love all fruit and veg but Tenderstem broccoli is my favourite vegetable, especially steamed. I can eat a huge plate of it just by itself with some herb oil and salt and black pepper. Lovely.
Are you a good cook?
I can cook but won’t cook. I find it one of the most boring things to do in the world and will wander away from the cooker at any opportunity, so I carry around a clockwork timer to remind me to go back or I’ll have yet another thing that’s burned on the stove.
What challenges have you had to overcome in your life and career?
When you come from a very poor family you quickly learn not to dwell on the bad things. So every challenge is an opportunity to me and I look forward always. I’m very happy and very lucky.
What food did you love as a young child, and have your taste buds changed as you got older?
When I was growing up Mum was a single parent with three children to look after and no money coming from my father, so she worked very hard indeed just to put any food on the table. My Taid (the Welsh word for grandfather) was a tenant farmer and he always brought a sack of potatoes and a tray of eggs for us and so we basically grew up on homemade chips and eggs and occasionally some fish from the chippy, but because money was short we didn’t eat rubbish like chocolates and sweets and cakes and all that stuff .
When my mum married my Italian stepfather, he and I would cook Italian food together on a Friday and people would come round not for a posh dinner party but for a supper kind of gathering. I loved those nights.
What can be done to encourage people to eat more fruit and veg?
I believe the reason that people eat badly is habit. It makes me very cross that there isn’t more fresh produce available when we’re travelling.
It has improved slightly, but by and large we are offered rubbish full of fat. Chopped fruit is a ridiculous price for what it is but processed burger and chips is cheap and fills you up.
It’s also difficult to get just a plate of steamed or boiled nice veg when you’re out. I find that frustrating, and it is a huge problem now that we are officially the fattest country in Europe. Our health system can’t cope.
I know it’s been said before but it is a crisis which will explode in the next 10 years when the NHS won’t be able to offer the care that should be available. -
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